City of York council is to consider cutting two recycling rounds and eight full time staff positions, in a bid to prevent a £400,000 overspend during the next financial year.
The changes – which could be adopted from 1 April 2017 – would see collections of residual waste and dry recyclables ‘de-coupled’, because the council argues recycling rounds are not operating at full capacity.
City of York council has overspent on collection services for three years (shutterstock/chrisdorney)
The move would reduce the number of terraced and non-terraced recycling rounds by one vehicle each, as well as a total of eight full time employees. This is to be achieved through deletion of four vacancies and four requests for voluntary redundancy.
A report to be presented to the council’s cabinet next week (9 January) notes: “The pattern of fortnightly collection of grey bin and kerbside recycling collections will be retained but we will move where required to a changed day of the week for the recycling collection. This will enable the number of recycling rounds to be reduced by two.”
By arranging alternative collection days, the council intends to rollout two replacement vehicles which will be better tailored to a kerbside sort collection system bringing a ‘big cost benefit’ and reducing commingling despite the council already operating a kerbside sort system.
Collections
Collections of refuse and recycling in the city are currently collected in-house by the council.
Residents are presented with three recycling boxes; one for paper and cardboard, one for plastic bottles and cans and one for glass. However in 2015/16 over 2,900 tonnes of recyclable material was commingled, with the council claiming this cost it an estimated £200,000 compared to if the material was separated.
Overspend
The council report shows that York’s collection service has overspent for the past three years – with an overspend of £360,000 forecast for 2016/17. The council is required to achieve £400,000 savings in order to operate within its allocated budget for 2017/18.
If passed next week, the proposals are expected to decrease staffing costs by £262,000, while a further £116,000 will be saved by the decreased reliance on the use of casual staff. The council claims that further savings of £40,000 will be achieved by the ‘reduced comingling’ of recyclables.
These savings will initially be offset by potential redundancy costs and the purchase of a new ‘rapid response’ mini refuse collection vehicle and driver to respond to reports of uncollected waste during the first 12 weeks after timetable changes.
One of the collection vehicles to be rolled out in York, with a side pod for glass
Vehicles
The replacement vehicles will include three compartments, consisting of a glass pod on the side and twin-compaction at the rear to better separate materials.
The council also hopes the changes will bring more consistency to the types of waste collected from Kexby and rural properties outside of the city – with an additional 800 households provided with a green waste and glass recycling collection service.
Phase Two
The second phase of the council’s review into collection efficiency will look at changes to refuse and green waste vehicles, including in-cab technology. This is due to be completed and implemented by April 2018.
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Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment
